The only fitting ending for A-Rod's saga is a Yankee championship

In less than a month, the Alex Rodriguez saga has gone from intriguing to tiresome to full-blown weird. The latest: Rodriguez hired a new lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, who says the Yankees knowingly sabotaged Rodriguez’s career by mismanaging his injuries — an incredibly bold claim, regardless of its accuracy.

Tacopina claims the league’s evidence against Rodriguez is not enough to suspend the slugger “for one inning,” and went on the Today Show with Matt Lauer to discuss MLB’s case against Rodriguez. But when Lauer surprised Tacopina with a letter from the league agreeing to waive the confidentiality clause in the joint drug agreement, Tacopina would not sign it. Blindsided, the lawyer got heated:

Rodriguez’s story has grown so ridiculously complex and so thoroughly absurd that it’s again almost impossible to look away. It boasts an appeal some have incorrectly likened to watching a train wreck, even though train wrecks only take like 30 seconds.

It’s a farce. With the possible exception of good-guy Joe Girardi, no party involved seems trustworthy, as practically every single actor has hidden or misconstrued or straight-up denied the truth at some point in the timeline. It’s a baffling labyrinth of he-saids and we-saids and they-saids, full of seedy characters and shady behavior, punctuated by pointed no-comments, tedious legalese, and the perpetual and largely pointless hand-wringing and chest-thumping of many in the fanbase and media.

And it’s all over baseball.

(PHOTO: Michael Dwyer/AP Photo)

Perhaps silliest of all, Rodriguez is actually playing well but it’s being widely overlooked because of notoriety that stems from how good he is at the sport. Say what you will about Rodriguez, he is one of the greatest players of his generation, and no one would care nearly this much about his performance-enhancing drug use if he weren’t.

And in his first handful of at-bats of 2013, he’s hitting .319 with a .409 on-base percentage and a .489 slugging — production on par with his career averages.

When Rodriguez returned from the disabled list in 2013, he joined a team that pretty obviously doesn’t want him, but one that very desperately needed him. The Yankees lacked for right-handed power and production from their third basemen all season and were struggling to stay in playoff contention.

They’ve now won seven of their last ten, including series wins over the Red Sox and Tigers. They’re still six games back of a Wild Card spot, but could there possibly be a better punchline to the Biogenesis scandal than Rodriguez leading the Yanks to the postseason?

Rodriguez’s involvement in Biogenesis seemed tailored to Shakespearean tragedy — a desperate, fallen hero doing everything he can to regain lost heights, ruining his reputation by his misguided efforts to save it. But it has unraveled into Shakespearean comedy, a complicated web of harebrained schemes and ludicrous behavior. And there would be no more fitting an end to it all than a Yankee championship.

Rodriguez starring for team he’s at odds with would maximize scandal’s silliness.

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